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Nonprofits and NGOs are in a delicate position because they depend on donors to uphold and support their cause and grants to fund their mission. At the same time, their donor counterparts and grantors are passionate and excited about the mission, and nonprofits need to respect the intent of the charitable donation or grant.

If donors were to find out their money was spent in a way contrary to their desire, future funding could be in jeopardy, not to mention the potential for a PR crisis. This is why clear communication with donors is extremely important for nonprofits and NGOs of any size. Adhering to donor intention doesn’t just protect your relationship with one particular donor or grantor; it also protects the overall mission of your nonprofit.

Understanding Donor Intention and Grant Restrictions

There are many layers of donor intent and three specific grant restrictions. Before setting up a grant or making a direct donation, philanthropists may have broad or very specific guidelines on how the funds should be spent. Terms and conditions of a grant or donation may include:

Unrestricted: without a designated use

Temporarily restricted: contains specific guidelines on how it will be used

Permanently restricted: must be held indefinitely (often with the intent to generate interest)

Even if a grant or donation is unrestricted, special care should be made to address the donor’s intent. This helps develop a relationship of trust that will hopefully extend far into the future.

How to Protect Donor Intent

The first step to protecting donor intent is to have a clear cut mission statement. You mission statement will not only help attract donors, it will help attract the right kind of donors—ones who are passionate about your cause. When you share the same goals, then most of the time donor intent will align itself naturally with your everyday processes.

Along with a clear mission statement, your nonprofit or NGO should have a strong commitment to ethical behavior on all levels of the organization. Perhaps this goes without saying, but even the slightest deviation from honest business practices (intentional or not) undermines your entire organization. Even in cases where donor intent isn’t clearly defined, all funds should be allocated with complete transparency and a commitment to spend it according to your donor’s wishes.

Finally, your nonprofit or NGO needs the right accounting and reporting tools so you can actually show your donors that you’re spending their funds as intended. In Geni Whitehouse’s whitepaper for Serenic Software, Grant vs. Grantt, she states, “Grant managers have strict accountability and tracking requirements, specialized reporting and measurement needs, and complex revision tracking requirements. It should be no surprise, then, that grant managers need special tools to support them.”

Selecting the Right Grant Management Software

Haphazard grant management increases the chances of mistakes and misallocation of funds. To ensure that your nonprofit or NGO is compliant with all fund restrictions, you need dedicated grant management software that integrates with your nonprofit accounting software.

Your organization’s mission is best supported with grant managing software designed specifically for nonprofits and NGOs; learn more about Serenic Software’s grants management solution, AwardVision

A recent study by Oracle has shown that Generation Y (or the “Millennials”) is a generation of conscientious, caring and giving citizens of the world. It therefore makes sense for nonprofits to harness their energy, know-how and donor potential. There’s a multitude of ways in which the younger generation can provide great value to nonprofits; we’ve listed our top five reasons to embrace Generation Y below. Read more…

We’re excited to be sponsoring a live webinar hosted by Fundraising Success. The webinar, “Doing What it Takes to Keep Supporters Involved”, is being hosted on Wednesday, January 23 at 12pm Mountain, 2pm Eastern. If one of your goals for 2013 is to increase the loyalty of your donors, you should register for the webinar.

We all know how important it is to cultivate the relationships you have with your donors. Managing communications is time consuming, but essential. We have donor management software to help build and maintain relationships by segmenting constituents, allowing you to target your communications and also track the success of your fundraising efforts.

As part of the cultivation of donors, this webinar points out how important it is to manage donor files and retain the donors with which you currently work.

Join us and Fundraising Success for this webinar to learn:

Top mistakes your organization might be making that drive away donors

The basic building blocks to donor loyalty

Social Media – the new face of donor loyalty and engagement

Fine-tune your organization’s retention efforts and start off 2013 on the right foot!

Every year the CPA Practice Advisor reviews nonprofit accounting systems and, once again, Serenic Navigator has earned a 5-star review. We’ve been earning this notable rating for several years now and always look forward to the article.

Since nonprofits have unique accounting needs, such as cross-fiscal-year reporting, grant and donor management, and restricted fund requirements, they need specialized accounting. And since money is tight and the economy struggling, efficiency, real-time budget monitoring, accountability via reporting, and transparency to funders are all crucial to the success of their missions. Therefore, this review is very helpful in identifying the right nonprofit financial system for nonprofits.

According to Mary Girsch-Bock, Contributing Writer, “Serenic Navigator is a powerful nonprofit product ideally suited for mid-size and larger nonprofit organizations.” Serenic Navigator is powered by Microsoft Dynamics NAV and offers a variety of financial products that can be purchased separately. Serenic Navigator is available as an on-premises solution, in a subscription-based software as a service (SaaS) model, or as a hosted deployment.

Some other highlights from the review include:

“Serenic Navigator contains an excellent selection of financial reports that are easily customized to suit the needs of the organization.”

“Serenic offers excellent audit trail functionality, with all system transaction recorded and stored for easy retrieval.”

“The comprehensive BudgetVision module contains just about every feature that nonprofit organizations could possibly need, including real time budget preparation, in-depth budget management and monitoring tools, and the ability to create multiple budgets simultaneously.”

“Because Serenic is built using Microsoft Dynamics NAV, it offers seamless integration with all Microsoft applications including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.”

“Serenic Navigator contains excellent Help functionality, including a new Knowledge Center that includes notifications, a search function, feedback button and four types of content, including user guides, how-to articles, how-to videos and troubleshooting tips.”